Analysis: Gov. Cuomo’s budget to be a tough act

“He gave a progressive agenda in the speech, but I think in the end you aren’t going to see anything different than in the first budget,” Lawrence Levy, a political commentator and dean of Hofstra University’s National Center on Suburban Studies.

That first Cuomo budget a year ago addressed a $10 billion deficit and made a small but rare spending cut that was supposed to be much of the pain to fix the “functionally bankrupt” Albany he inherited.

Then it got worse.

A surprise $350 million deficit emerged last fall and, under pressure from his progressive base to cut spending no more, Cuomo reversed his opposition to a millionaire tax, which he had argued would kill jobs, and ended up supporting it.

“I want to see how they are going to close the budget deficit, what their revenue projects are,” Levy said. “That gives an early warning sign of potential gimmicks.”

Cuomo’s father, Gov. Mario Cuomo, once resorted to such ploys by selling Attica state prison to another state agency, in a kind of political shell game that led to almost routine use of gimmicks and “one-shot” revenues — moves that contributed to the overspending “death spiral” that helped usher Andrew Cuomo into office in 2010.

One of the biggest one-shots on the table is the conversion of the Emblem health insurer from a nonprofit to a for-profit company. The state’s approval could result in $1 billion in the release of funds that were collected for the public good.

Other options include borrowing from pension funds and selling state assets. Asset sales could including selling off state office buildings or even privatizing services such as the state lottery.

“Asset sales and one-shots are the danger, and then hoping the economy grows enough to get them out of their mess,” said Richard Brodsky, a former Democratic assemblyman from Westchester who is now a senior fellow at the Wagner School at New York University. “This will be a real test of fiscal discipline.”